


If You Talk Enough Sense

by JDylah_da_Kylah



Series: You Only Meant Well? [2]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Needs A Hug, Experimental Style, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Illustrated, Making Love, Non-Binary Frisk, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route - "I want to stay with you.", Romance, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 07:00:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8880370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JDylah_da_Kylah/pseuds/JDylah_da_Kylah
Summary: The past, with its myriad of certitudes, has a strangle-hold of Sans, well enough he knows. And yet he finds himself more terrified not of the timelines streaked with dust but the Great Unknown ahead of him, the (im)perfect (im)possible futures over which he really has no control. He's given up long ago—but what kind of answer is that when surrounded by others who know no more than hope?
Or: Toriel offers Sans an antidote to deterministic nihilism.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Just another little Sans/Toriel ficlet. Partially done because I needed something therapeutic to work on, and also sparked by a conversation my coworkers had. They were wondering why it's seen as so "wrong" to use sleeping with a friend as a means of comforting them after a breakup (or, by extension, through any hard time in their life). "Sometimes," one person said, "you just need that closeness, and it doesn't have to make it weird or complicated." 
> 
> I wouldn't know, but it's an interesting thought, and I wanted to play with it a little bit. I honestly wasn't sure where this would end up, so I didn't start it with, uhm, an ulterior motive, if anyone's curious. ;) In fact, I really had no idea what the heck I was doing with this, so—?
> 
> I do know that this is definitely a prelude to [_—When Our Souls Touched_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8673043). I got to wondering about how exactly Sans and Toriel would first be intimate with one another. And, before all that . . . how's Sans handling the cold, hard fact that everything could be ripped away from him—from all of them? What's the point of this Perfect Happy Ending if it could simply . . . end? He might put on a plausible facade for everyone, one Frisk themself backs up, but eventually Tori's going to catch on.
> 
> Heavily inspired by Amber Run's "I Found" (the title's from this, too):  
> "I'll use you as a focal point  
> So I don't lose sight of what I want.  
> . . .  
> And I'll use you as a makeshift gauge  
> Of how much to give and how much to take.  
> Oh I'll use you as a warning sign,  
> That if you talk enough sense then you'll lose your mind.
> 
> Oh and I found love where it wasn't supposed to be,  
> Right in front of me.  
> Talk some sense to me."
> 
> Thoughts/comments/reviews/etc. are always welcome, and do this writer good. <3 Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

** **

  _"here."_

* * *

 

Toriel wakes to the sharp, stubborn-SOULed staccato of phalanges on the barren, hard-scrubbed floor. Through the moonlight seeping through the window—a beauty, a novelty, which she'll never quite accept—the Boss Monster watches him intently. Occasionally, too, she catches the gleaming edges of his skull, his arms—the radius, the ulna—the metacarpals and phalanges of his hands flaring intermittently, like ghosts, threaded through with trace tendrilled magic, palest cyan light.

It hasn't been so long since the Barrier was broken. Since Frisk quietly took her hand, _her_ hand, and they made their way down the slopes of Mt. Ebott together. Less time still since Papyrus and the child have taken to sharing a room—

And this, the first time she's managed to coax Sans from his self-appointed makeshift bed—no more than a worn blanket on the couch, just by the door. For what? For this? Was this why he kept himself so distant—because he'd woken with a cry and, trembling, slipped from the bed to pace, the whole frame of him a-rattling?

Or was it because of why he'd held her hand but done no more? Surely he'd sensed in her the curiosity and love and longing? Could Monsters not of flesh even yearn for such a closeness, such an act? Had she been wrong? Had she, her SOUL, misread the quivering in his?

They are adults, such as it were, neither a one of them naïve . . .

She's expected nothing, hopes for something more, and fears now that, even in passivity, she's broken something far beyond repair.

_Do I speak?_ she wonders. _Do I dare let him know I'm here? He is suffering, is he not? This is anguish, and not—I think, I hope—for me,_ of _me._

But . . .

_He is not unlike my child, when they wake at night thrashing, crying, when they run through the house in a panic, when nothing it seems will console them (when, oddly, so often do they call for_ him _)—_

Toriel carefully lays aside the covers, moving slowly, making no sudden gestures, holding still so that the moonlight seeping doesn't catch her, so that even her rounded shadow does not cross his path.

He is silent, which frightens her perhaps more than his fear—his eyes are _dark_ —more than merely lightless: she wonders what he sees. A frightened child—even one reduced to soundless trembling—she knows well enough how to comfort. But dear Sans—her friend—(lover?)—

* * *

"Sans."

* * *

He knows that voice, registers it dimly, thrusts the recognition from his mind with a savagery for which she'd never forgive him, if she knew—which of course she won't—because it doesn't matter, does it in the end, if she's still there when morning comes? If this isn't just a figment? No, of course not, because there _is_ no end: sweet-sleeping-Frisk next door can snap the thread: he still doesn't yet understand what trips the anomaly's trigger—what's to say a word of _them_? What then?

Impermanence. No memory, not a one, not for anyone among the Monsters except Flowey and himself (which is to say nothing of the kid). The others prickle, maybe, are uneasy, find themselves privy to fragments—cinnamon over butterscotch— _Tori . . ._ —but that's nothing, nothing, _nothing_ to what's been done, can _always_ be done: this Perfect Happy Ending (such that it is) snatched from them—given back, perhaps, sometime again, _another_ time, but not and never quite like this and—

* * *

And what has woken him?

Not a flare of golden light to blind him.

Not sweet innocent Papyrus welcoming the _fiend_ with open arms.

Not even the few moments in-between—the reckoning, the precious time—when he warned, or warns, the folk of Snowdin— _Run_ —not yet knowing if the child will listen to his warning—not yet knowing if Undyne will succeed—or if Alphys will shelter them all in the true lab—

(Except the kid who wouldn't leave—no matter how he pleaded—)

None of that, not even the Judgement Hall, all golden-light, all gleaming-knife and magic searing through the air, through both of them, their bodies pushed almost past endurance—

No.

He dreams—or else he has—he doesn't know, not anymore—he _dreamed_ —that his feet carried him to the Ruins, while the Frisk-who-wasn't-Frisk—who-was-Chara—first-fallen-one—Angel of Death—whisked their way through Waterfall and Hotland, silent Echo Flowers mournfully repeating back, again, the cries of the wounded and the dying (which no one would hear). The solitary door in the deep of Snowdin Forest swallows him, a greedy maw, and there—

He's seen dust before, of course, seen Monsters freshly fallen-down—worked with Alphys long enough to know about DETERMINATION—how the hell else could he stand against _them_ in that forsaken hall? He's seen his brother's own remains catch on the cold, sharp wind which howls when he ties that scarlet scarf around his neck.

But, come the first prickling, insipid grief in his nonexistent guts, to teleport across the threshold there, the great, sealed door, and find no more than—

Toriel.

Tori.

(Her warmth, her welcome, sweet ambrosial balm for the sharp edges of his mind: her laugh, her arms, her lips—the things he knows she longs for—he does, too, but for dreams such as this—)

* * *

"Sans?"

* * *

_don't say a word to me. if you're gone—you'll just be gone—i'll lose you—always lose you—some way or another—(please, please don't ask this of me, tori—i'm so tired—i tried to keep my promise and sometimes i have but other times—it's cost us everything_

_and_ n o t h i n g   e v e r   e n d s. _)_

* * *

Losing Papyrus was (is) never easy, never, and the sweet child sometimes still sends shivers up his spine, a savage spark through nonexistent veins. _dirty brother killer!_

But _this_ thing has never happened before. The surface. The house. The . . . illusion of a family.

And for the first time in so long, Sans doesn't know what next to do. Now he's not the stabilizing constant, skipping through the Underground, through _time_ , cognizant of all of it: now they're on the _surface_ and have been for this long, so long, that Papyrus and the kid are in the room next door and he and Tori—

_it's all in your hands, kiddo._ my _hopes._ my _dreams. i didn't even know i had them anymore. you heard me. "just give up. i did." i never took that back, did i? even when you gave us—gave me—this—_

He stumbles, dares not look to see what's caught his feet; his hands fumble in the darkness—really darkness?— **dark, darker, yet darker** —

* * *

— _no_ —

* * *

Toriel catches him, wraps him in her arms, feels him trembling so greatly that his rattling, cyan-spitting bones seem to grate against each other. His hands clench, spasmodically, ferociously, digging into fur and flesh; she does not mind; Frisk has done this often; centuries ago, so did Asriel, did—Chara—

Impulsively an old lullaby—words long forgotten now—catches in her throat and she begins to hum it softly, rocking him, dropping to her knees so that he doesn't really need to stand—not when he shudders so—

Her massive paws, with utmost care, card across his skull, conforming to the contours and the ridges of his cheekbones, the divot just above his eye sockets—she'd see no light therein, she knows—except that haunting flickering, the flame, cyan, just like the magic beaded at his fingertips, flashing from his SOUL—there are no tears for him to weep but he is shaking all the same with unvoiced cries—as if his heart would break.

She slips one hand to steady him, broad digits spread, filed claws gentle, _gentle_ there against the bones beneath his shirt—his spine, his ribs, his collarbone. Little can she know that this is not like rubbing circles on a frightened child's back, letting the rhythmic motions soothe them—this—

* * *

He clings to her, desperately now, seeking nothing and somehow finding everything because he's perhaps needed this and never, never would he ask. Her fingers tracing those sweet places—but most of all the worry and the love, pure love, emanating from her SOUL—they tether him—

"i've tried," he manages to gasp, "tori, i've tried . . ."

The lullaby is still a hum at her throat, laced within the words. "Tried what, dear one?"

He buries his head further against her, blotting out the world for just an instant, all to keep it from shattering into pieces he'll never be able to regather. Shivering phalanges finally unclench, begin carefully to stroke her fur, to brush a broad, soft ear back from her face, to wipe away a tear she's wept in his stead. For a moment no words come; he fights for them, finds none; her hands keep wandering, distracting him, soft-soothing gestures—

Were it not for the flutter of her SOUL that so often he catches—hints—quiet questionings—and hopes—were it not for that he'd ask her to stop—she surely knows not what she does to him—

Her eyes are wide when he finally glances up, when he realizes (guiltily at that) that their motions have taken on a rhythm, a sensual, undisputed thing: that two lost SOULs seek each other in the dark; that Monsters of flesh and bones alike can so want and need and love.

But if this happens—will it destroy him? Hard enough it is to hold the world together, if not literally—that power's Frisk's alone. Ah, but at least in micro—at least such trivial attempts to keep himself sane—which he very much doubts now—

If this happens—

_i owe her more than this, before we—if we—_

"Sans?"

"need to tell you something. don't expect you to believe. don't think you'll remember."

"What are you so afraid of, Sans? I worry for you greatly, dear one. I want you to be happy here. With . . . me. I will not leave you. Your brother is in the room next door. My—our—"

" _tori—_ "

"—child . . . Frisk . . . they're safe, they're sound, they're whole. All is well, all is well . . . all manner of things shall be—"

_you . . . don't know . . . what they can do . . . and what i've done . . ._

"tori, you won't believe me."

"So you have said. Let me be the judge of that, dear one. Tell me."

Her hands have stopped their stroking; his phalanges do no more than stroke the fur of her forearm, back and forth, the motion and the tenderness a kind of medicine. Their SOULs still tremble, but well enough they know that this must precede all—may change all—most likely will.

* * *

Her mind, while not inclined to the hard sciences, is sharp. Sans starts slowly, picking at broad facts—there are timelines—yes—plural—and from there slowly teasing at the details, letting her questions guide him. Are there other Frisks, then? Other Asgores? Undynes? Theoretically, perhaps, but in _this_ world—the world they are aware of?—no. The timeline—time as they experience it, the sum of each chronological moment, _chronos_ —can be, in fact, RESET.

_RESET._

There's another time, of course, _kairos_ , and Sans can usually sense it. Perhaps Gaster—she remembers Gaster, yes?—knows more of it than any of them now.

What _is_ that, then? (One paw slips from his cheek to cup his hand; her tracing the metacarpals isn't nearly as distracting as . . .) What is a RESET?

Everything and everyone ripped from the timeline, thrust into another, most having no memories of it. If they do, it's via the slightest inklings—intuition, it must feel like. A dream of a dream. A forgotten-thing that probably isn't real (but was—but was). Like a slate wiped clean, but sometimes you see chalk-shadows left behind.

"Most" have no memories—some, then, still do?

. . . yes.

And in these timelines, certain things are set in stone, because going back to The Beginning isn't possible . . .

He holds Tori in her turn when she trembles, when she dares not ask if, in these RESETs, there's ever a time when her Asriel, her Chara, _live_. He doesn't have the heart to tell her the truth—what Chara really is, what Asriel's become. And the events following their deaths, in fact, are something of the catalyst for _this_ timeline—that is to say, the one Frisk can RESET. The one which, at least this time, made their current situation even possible.

Nor can he find due cause to mention _them_ , though, not outright. When Toriel presses he uses the old phrase from his research-days with Alphys, Gaster: "the anomaly," he says . . . and from what Frisk's told him, just him, about the other timelines . . . maybe that's not so far from the truth . . .

Tori is silent for a while, piecing together the tidbits from Sans' nightmares and from Frisk's that not all timelines are good. That some, in fact, were filled with dust and loss—what else causes Sans to wake up screaming? What else causes Frisk such wide-eyed, silent fear that they cling to her and refuse to let her go?

_My child and my dear one—_

They, they two are the ones who know this second-time, this kairos.

She glances at him, sadly, realizing as well why he's so afraid of losing her—and of-itself, that's a far more painful fact than the unsettling knowledge that she's _died_. That her Frisk could ever—

He's never said, despite all this, that a RESET couldn't happen yet again.

So there is no guarantee? Each moment like this could be their last?

* * *

Sans opens his eyes.

The light is gold. Is bright.

He blinks, praying to nothing in particular that he's _wrong_ —

But instinct is a fickle thing and he's seen too much not to hear the fiend's resounding step echo through the Judgement Hall, or else feel that disorienting lurching _dread_ as the thread's snapped and the world turns madly and it's all done and _gone_ and begun again.

He tries to struggle.

_can't move my body._

He cries out—shamefully, these days, to beg for mercy—not _that_ mercy—but something— _something_ —he's so tired—he can't do this anymore—

He calls for help.

. . .

He tries again.

But nothing happens.

* * *

. . .

* * *

"The whole world is not ending."

Broad paws clasp at clenched phalanges, snuffing out the cyan light.

"It is just the sunrise, dear one. Just the morning. See? I am still here. I will not leave you."

* * *

Frisk and Papyrus will be waking up soon. Perhaps the surface has convinced the latter of the merits of a good night's sleep, perhaps the days are too full of new sights and goings-on, perhaps he fakes it for sheer decency, sharing a room with the kid (who needs their rest)—though Sans doubts the latter very much.

But it's quiet now, quiet save the gentle, cadenced swell of Toriel's breathing, the thrum of magic through her SOUL, the residual panicked cyan spree still hammering through his. Her broad hands, lithe-fingered and blunt-clawed, are tracing once again the curve of his skull, the clavicle, brushing at his ribs but nothing more—she knows now that, at least to him, all those places—and the spine, the curving of the pelvis—are little secrets. Erogenous.

He, in turn, runs delicate phalanges across her velvet ear, no more, willing himself to be steady, taking in the details which are, in fact, unchanging . . . just for now. The room. Scrubbed-wood-floors. The walls cracked from age or a sunken foundation. The sun-spotted windowpane and the golden light refracted tenfold, it seems, thereof: warm, bright, a gleaming spread against her thick, dense fur. More beautiful the sunlight captured there than anywhere—

"Sans."

Her deep, deep, ancient eyes roll towards him, languidly, underneath a spread of lashes. Delicate. Would that he were a Monster like she is—flesh over these bones—would that he have so finessed a form as lips with which to kiss her there—just there—above her eyes.

_but i'm not. tori._

And that's the other thing he'll never tell her, his own damning secret fear. Forget what last night almost turned into when he was afraid—forget what he's felt reflected in her SOUL, a mirror unto his—

Does she understand? There are things he can never give her; at best he prays that she's not under the illusion that through magic (or otherwise) something could be . . . fashioned . . . because it doesn't work that way.

Does she even _care_? Does something like that matter, in reality, to a being as ancient as she, who knows more of the head and heart than she'll let on?

For a Monster who's perfected the art of apathy, Sans no more knows what to do or feel about all _this_ than the Perfect Happy Ending they somehow, somehow, got. For now. But act he must . . .

* * *

Toriel smiles, sadly, the same deep tender sadness which almost swallowed her when she realized why he's been so afraid of losing her—because he's known that loss already. She could speak, but sometimes words are heavy things not worth asking another being to bear: sometimes things are best fixed with a warm embrace or pie or sitting by the fireside, reading. Sometimes things are best fixed not by such quantifiable minutia as platitudes but _this_ —

"Look at me, dear one."

The words are soft. He's never heard that tone before; the syllabic cadence matches far too perfectly the playing of her fingertips as they slip from rib to rib and painstakingly trace the faintest path along his spine.

He thinks, vaguely, of speaking his piece—of speaking of his fear—but then she pulls him to her, wrapping one great arm around him until he need not close his eyes to shield himself from the bright, bright light that's far too much like the emanation from a SAVE point—or the Judgement Hall—because _she_ shelters him—

And he then he realizes that "Look at me" is not such a simple thing as open-eyes, as irises locked one to another—

Tentatively their hands find paths to wander; flesh and bone are not so different, really, in this act: there's the subtle joy in finding just the place that elicits a soft cry or, from Toriel, a sharp intake of breath—

And thus it becomes a cadenced thing, a rapid, unspoken exchange, each fueled by the other's movements, low-hummed words; their bodies know well enough the rhythm (such that there's always rhythm to the act, the coupling of selves, regardless of the parts involved)—and, oh, their SOULs—

This, _this_ is what he's wanted, needed, yearned for, the only thing he can possibly give her that is close, at all, to what flesh Monsters share. Their SOULs, of course, have no color, not as Humans' do, but—ah—no—he catches glimpses of it, faintly, flickering in hers—the deepest, most dazzling-dark _blue._

(Cool phalanges, of their own accord, have found some sweet-warm place and her unbridled joy as she trembles against him is far past words.)

But it surprises him when it's _her_ SOUL that first seeks his, a flickered stroking, all uncertainty, that yearns for more than this improvised, if rather stilted and one-sided love-dance. Her eyes are wide, her hands grown still, as if she isn't quite sure _what_ she's doing—but he doesn't mind—not in the slightest—

"here."

He takes her paw within his grasp, noting the tendons there, the bones; presses his forehead against hers, smiling especially (though ever-smiling that he is) at the strange, strange picture they must make: this stocky set of bones straddling a Boss Monster taller than the tallest Human, whose snout fits just beneath his jaw this way—

Strands of magic seep from his hand, his eye, begin to spool from her fingertips as well, after a moment when she catches on, when her wonder is captured in a gasp of rapture gathered between them both, therein caught the sum of them when it's more than they can bear and the tempo fixed between them beats the same, the score crescendos: dazzling-deep-blue and splintered, flaring cyan—threads to bind them—threads far more sensitive than hands to stroke, caress, a place far more sacred than mere flesh—or bone—

* * *

"This . . . does not take away your fear."

They should get up, should dress, should make sure that Papyrus doesn't accidentally burn the house down around them in an attempt to make breakfast. But the afterglow around them, the residue of magic and euphoria, waxes brighter yet than the rising sun and Toriel is determined to let this last a moment more.

"This does not take away your pain."

His eyes are closed. Despite everything, of course, this is still Sans—it would not shock her in the slightest if he slept. She hopes he doesn't, but dares not try to wake him yet. Perhaps this is one of those things as needs saying but is not meant, necessarily, to be heard. Perhaps, in time, he'll simply know.

"I do not understand all of what you say about timelines and RESETs. I do not know that I can believe that . . . some other time than this . . . Frisk was not themself. I do not know that I can believe you broke your promise to me, dear one. That everyone, everyone . . . did not die, did not fall down: was murdered."

He stirs minutely; she strokes his cheek until the cyan glow is gone.

"I can do nothing for you to take away your nightmares, would that I could. I can do no more for Frisk. But I am here, I will always be here, for both of you. I am not going anywhere. And Sans—if you think that this will frighten me away from you . . ."

* * *

_i can't accept this, any of it, can't hang hope on it. tori . . ._

* * *

"All shall be well."

She's singing, to the lullaby's tune, though not the lullaby's words.

* * *

But he finds that, cradled in her arms, still blinking away the traces of their coupled light . . . if not believing that he's safe . . . but knowing that he's warm, and loved . . . by so great and gentle a creature as she is . . . he can't fight back, can't, for just this moment, find a reason to hold himself aloof, to scoff, to cast the world darkly with a cynic's mind.

* * *

"All shall be well."

He nestles his head against her shoulder, tucked there just beneath her jaw. He hears Frisk's joyous step across the floor next door, Papyrus' laugh. They're at peace with this, aren't they? For now? Quietly he resolves that they not walk through this great unknown alone. Neither of them, privy as they are to what has been, might be, in all ugliness and beauty both, stands a chance that way.

Toriel's breath against his cheek is soft.

He expects that, on some night, Frisk won't come seeking him on the couch in the living room but will know he's here instead. Will crawl between them and find comfort in their warmth. And that he'll welcome them with open arms, and for their sake—for hers—if he yet catches glimpses of kairos—it won't be for fear, or loss, but love.


End file.
